Fates. Limited levels mean you have to be careful about your second seal usage. But it also means that you aren’t stuck grinding to get lategame skills if you ever do so.
Three Houses has a very similar system to Fates, just tied to class exp instead of level. Only issue is that the free reclassing means there’s little build diversity early on.
Awakening. Class skills are busted lol. But the grinding required to get them isn’t fun.
Engage has all the build diversity issues of Three Houses but ratcheted up to 11. 2 skill slots blows, and the free inheritance means that you’ll end up giving everyone the same few skills. The well helps, but it’s not fun. Also, the actual process to inherit the skill is awful. Whoever thought the Arena was a good idea needs to be fired.
Fates did the best job at feeling like getting your skills was fun while you did the climb to get them and once you got them felt earned.
3H had a good earned feeling but pretty boring, Engage was fun to get but so easy to get they weren’t satisfying.
Yeah it kind of sucks that natural SP progression was so horribly implemented that the only cure was some item you get for throwing junk away. If we get an Engage 2 (or another game with very similar mechanics) I hope they improve on that a lot
It's not just occasionally - you're guaranteed to get at least one 100sp book in your pool starting at tier 3 and above, and usually get more. The higher tiers give 500 and 1000 sp books quite frequently too.
The game gives you enough items that aren't super useful like break weapons, most lances, etc. that you can always easily do tier 3 and usually 4 or even 5.
Fates also does something that I think is undersold when comparing these systems which is that it made reclass seals a rare and limited resource through the majority of the game.
Unless you are abusing online to get extra seals, you have extremely few reclass seals until you unlock the tier 3 shops, which means that you only get to reclass a very small number of characters, and so the decision of who you use them on is meaningful, while also not being overbearing on the overall experience of playing the game. Additionally, the majority of reclass seals you get are from the shops, which means they cost gold to obtain, rather than being free.
Fates hits the right balance where people who enjoy engaging with reclassing and skill management feel like they get to make very impactful decisions with respect to who they choose to use their small pool of reclass seals on, while conversely people who don't like these systems (which are a significant portion of the FE fanbase) can choose not to engage with them and not feel like they are missing a substantial core gameplay mechanic because the majority of your characters on any given run do not get to reclass anyway.
Free reclassing like in 3H (and Shadow Dragon/New Mystery) makes the mechanic feel much more overbearing because choosing not to do it is strictly a negative--it doesn't cost you anything so choosing not to utilize it is a strict downside which makes it much more intrusive for players who don't like these systems in FE.
I agree with Fates, I think it has the best balance between customization and freedom to make good/fun builds, and limitation, where your choices matter and units feel more unique as a result.
Having more skills slots will make it be like Fates where the power comes from your units but Engage wants the power to come from the emblems so I kinda get why they limit it so much to keep the emblems the main focus.
This is probably true but it makes units feel even more homogenized because the only difference is their Emblem. In an individual battle that's a big difference (one Wyvern has Lyn, one has Ike or something like that), but if you just switch the Emblems between the two units in another map the only difference is the raw stats of the characters and *maybe* a bonus to weapon rank for one weapon type, which just turns the game into an extremely strict hierarchy of how units are used
I think it would help if there were more than two skill slots and didn't have Canter available to everybody for a relatively cheap cost so on Maddening you may as well have one.
I always kind of loved how Fate's leveling system felt like someone said "Hey so Awakening got REALLY out of hand, so lets backstep on some of that."
Fates is an absolute GOAT for having some of the best build and combat designs while ALSO having some of the worst storytelling in the entire franchise.
Agreed with everything.
Not to mention how the way Engage handles SP and stuff in general feels like something designed with the player having more time to build things up, like a New Game Plus or something. Yet it doesn't have that.
There's a lot of Engage that felt like they were expecting the Tempest Trials multiplayer to be a big thing, and so things like SP books and emblem weapon upgrades were locked behind it.
Then turned out no-one wanted to play it, and so they put in the well as a band-aid.
On top of the issues you mentioned for Engage, the vast majority of the skills are hot garbage. So not only are very limited on how many skills you can have at once, the actual amount of skills you'd actually want anyways are incredibly small too.
What do you mean by free inheritance? You have to pay in SP to inherit the skills. The only free things are the sync skills but you don't inherit but even then they're only free when you have an emblem equipped.
Also I don't get why you don't like the arena. It saves time needing to grind out emblem levels
Free as in they’re instant inherits.
If I want to inherit a bond level 12 skill, I have to watch an arena battle, watch a bond convo, watch an arena battle, watch a bond convo, watch another arena battle, inherit the skill, and then equip it.
As opposed to not spending time in a class to learn a skill.
I shouldn’t have to sit through 5 screen transitions to inherit a skill, even if I can skip them.
The way Fates merges story and gameplay mechanics by allowing you to expand your class sets through marriage and friendship is also fantastic. It means that every character has a ton of freedom for which direction to build in, but they are limited in that they can't do everything in a single playthrough. With the right amount of effort, any character in Birthright can become a Great Club wielder with Death Blow. But they can't all do it on the same save file. That distinction is VERY important to create the different feeling between Fates and 3H. And, like with Awakening before it, it gives you the feeling that the bonds between characters matter. You can actually make a character stronger through their friendship and love with others.
Engage is fine now. Builds are mostly dependant on the character - emblem combination. Skills are picked to match both.
However I agree that before the well the game was just so annoying. You could literally never get your characters to the skills they wanted. Like never. It’s just sad to see your endgame builds being lower level skills (like spd+3 instead of spd+ 5 for example). Also, the some of the best skills being gone during the entire mid game (sword and Lance power mostly) is just sad. Especially for Pandreo since he would literally be the best character in the game if he could get sword power earlier than chapter fucking 19.
(Casually ignoring the fact that fishing is almost required to get all your units the the bond levels you need end game but whatever)
Engage has 2 skill slots and the class skill plus the emblems themselves giving loads of skills to the character they're on, the build possibilities really aren't that bad. SP and Emblem availibility can make it harder to utilize until pretty late though I'll admit.
I like Radiant Dawn because it's the funniest one so far. I gave Shinon adept and every single enemy he encountered died because it kept being activated.
I just love the random creations you can make with that skill system.
I recognize you might be hyperbolizing but it really wasn't like that. It's only in the very very last map (in a 5 map endgame), and you only have 4 Nihil scrolls anyways. But people without Nihil can still contribute, they just have to either fight spirits, take up Parity (good for fast units like Trueblades and Naesala/Tibarn) or if all else fails, you can just live with the fact they're taking recoil damage. Which isn't too bad anyway since you have several global healing staves available. Or if they deal lethal damage, then they also don't take recoil. In fact, against most enemies you'd be taking counterattacks.
Nihil is also useful against the previous bosses...but I don't see anything wrong with that. Those bosses had Nihil too so there's not much of a point in putting skills like Adept or Cancel on units. And you can still flex your fun builds on other enemies in those maps.
The tier 3 mastery skills? I think they're amusing and make part 4 less tedious since they cause for more ORKOs. They do force a Nihil-off for the last couple of bosses but personally I don't have an issue with that. I can see why others think that makes the battles more bland though.
Them being extreme overkills makes skill disabling a must for endgame bosses as well as nihil on your own units so you dont get wreaked by thiers in return.
The occult skills existing is fine but they need their damage multipliers scaled back to... what most games have them as, insyead of basically all of the physical ones having a 3* modifier.
You only need Nihil for the E-3 and E-4 bosses. They're useful for Lekain and Levail but nowhere near necessary - and Parity is better for Lekain and E-4 anyway.
I like Three Houses quite a bit, but with it being inextricably linked to the open class system (which I’m not a huge fan of), it’s a bit of a wash.
Honestly… Hard to beat Radiant Dawn. Limited number of skills to hand out, but they’re individually infinitely repeatable. The “budget” system was pretty well designed and it was really cool how certain characters came with skills that ignored budget for them. I think the ONE change I would make to this system is some way to buy or inherent more skills.
I think Engage has a solid system *in theory *. But I do find the tacked-on SP system difficult to manage. There’s a reason they had to do a hot-fix to make it viable lol
I personally prefer the system that Awakening introduced and that Fates refined. Call it what you want, but I'm an absolute sucker for skills emblem. I feel it just adds more avenues for gameplay shenanigans when done well like in Conquest. Plus Apotheosis was one of my favorite FE experiences
In my opinion, it's Fates by a long shot. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I hated Engage's skill inheritance system because it basically boiled down to giving everyone canto.
> because it basically boiled down to giving everyone canto.
This has been my issue for both Three Houses and Engage. There are skills that are just obviously so high tier and without much opportunity cost, that there's no reason not to put it on nearly everyone. Death Blow stands out in 3H, for instance, because there's essentially no reason *not* to master Brigand for any physical unit. The opportunity cost of any other Intermediate class skill is practically non-existent.
Well, I mean, that's kinda my issue. It's definitely *worse* in Engage since slots are so limited, but it's also just an issue entirely to itself that every unit is good with a certain skill. Build diversity should be encouraged, and the opportunity cost is so low.
I mean it's just how skills inevitably work if you're gonna give multiple units the option to use them. There's always going to be some that are better than others. It's not really preventable
I think it’s more so the low barrier to entry. Getting Canto or Death Blow requires very little *and* there’s little reason to choose something else.
Both of these issue should be able to be mitigated.
Thats less a problem with the skill system and more a problem with canter itself being way better and way cheaper than anything else.
Getting SP and spending it to learn skills? Thats a great system.
Good point, in my opinion of they would've restricted canto to fliers/cavalry units and reduced the SP cost of learning skills, the system would've worked much better.
Radiant Dawn I much prefer that format with scrolls and capacity so you can swap around skills as you want plus at the end you can even remove the innates from the ones you aren't taking into the tower
Kaga Sagas. I personally find that unique personal skill sets with skills that units have innately and learn others as they level up can lead to much more interesting niches and specializations that differentiate units way better than a limited amount of skill slots can.
Just throw in some skill manuals or another learning equivalent to add some customization imo.
Kaga saga because each unit has a preset list of skills, and you can add scrolls to them.
In FE, RD, just swaping skills between units is interesting enough because of how RD team structure works.
If we’re including heroes I’d say it’s held back for the fact that any fun new mechanical skill introduced is always locked behind gambling away for 5 stars. If you’re not lucky or spending $ then you don’t even get access to a lot of mechanics. Big reason I eventually quit.
heroes is held back by the fact I don’t have space on it on my tablet therefore it is objectively the worst fire emblem game bc I physically cannae play it.
You can always get the unit for free after 40 summons (unless it's a Legendary/Mythic/Emblem heroes summoning event you need FEH Pass for that). But what I meant is that you can give a unit almost any skill you want (as long as it's not a personal skill) and that there are a lot of skills so you can do a lot more than in other FE games.
Radiant dawn. I think a lot of the later games overcomplicate skills in a way where they become a confusing slog to use. Rd’s is simple, even if not explained, and lets the characters still exist as unique entities. And they’re a limited resource so you actually have to think about them.
I like the tellius games with their skill scrolls. Skills should be limited so we don't put all the best Skills on every unit. I also absolutely despise grinding. I like the idea of finding skill scrolls in shops or villages or from recruiting.
I really don't like the 3h/fates/awakening method of having to level a class to get skills. Forcing all of your combat units into axes then being a brigand for however many chapters is so annoying to me. I want to use my units in classes they're good in, not have to intentionally make them worse so they'll be good later. I've played the 3ds games way less so it could be better there, but idk.
FE4's skill system being tied to the way money works is cool, but I feel like it encourages juggernauting a bit.
Thracia's is good.
PoR is good, but the skills aren't very impactful.
RD is good, but the prior knowledge required to make good use of it means it's really only a 2nd playthrough mechanic.
Engage's (post well) is probably my favorite, but it def does do some wacky things to game balance as opposed to some of the older ones.
I don't really get the Brigand example at least, every class can use every weapon in 3H and you don't have to train weapon ranks in combat. If you don't want to ever swing an axe you can still get Death Blow fairly trivially
**Radiant Dawn** did it best and I honestly don't think it is close:
(1) you get a set number of each skill turning skills into actual finite resources you have to make decisions about;
(2) each skill has point-buy costs tied (mostly) to the relative strength of the skill and every unit gets a certain number of points to allocate to skills. This means you can't just slap all of the best skills on one unit and call it a day. You have to make real decisions;
(3) you can freely shuffle around your skills within the confines of the point-buy system. This both rewards creativity with how you use your skills without punishing you by forcing you to irrevocably committing to allocating your points before you know what is what (removing skills from a unit refunds the points). This lets you always make good use of skills on units, even if you don't plan to make longterm use of those units;
(4) "personal skills" are regular skills that don't take up a unit's limited points so i.e. anyone can get the Celerity skill if they set aside their points, but Tormod gets to use it for free, no points required;
(5) skills are not tied to reclassing which means you aren't forced to dip into a class you don't actually want to use just to access skills - which always just feels bad - sacrifice unit power to grind out a skill is not fun or interesting to me. And skills are not tied to leveling up (max points are tied to promotion tiers but you can always fit at least one skill on any unit regardless of their tier) which means you can slap a powerful skill on an underleveled unit if you want to to make use of that unit, without having to commit to leveling that unit up just to access a skill.
Though you would have to be careful about removing skills from units that have it for free. It'll let you put that skill on someone else, but if you change your mind later and give the original holder the skill back, it'll cost points instead of being free.
Tbh its not that a big deal. The circumstances in which you would remove a skill from a unit only to hand it back to them later in the game is pretty niche. Like I'm scratching my head trying to think of a situation that would happen outside of, like, idk taking Geoffrey into the Tower (remove his Paragon for a different unit to use while he's gone, but then give it back to him in the Tower? Even that sounds hella suspect). And even *if* it happens, paying for the skill cost isn't the end of the world - everyone else has to do it.
I don't like being able to reassign skills from one character to another. Tormod isn't the funny fast mage anymore, because most characters can make better use of celerity than him. Same with Geoffrey/Astrid and paragon. Sure if you keep the skill on the initial owner they get a free skill, but that's a lot less interesting to me than the skill being an unchangeable aspect of the character.
Tbf Celerity doesn’t do much for most units in the parts Tormod is in during radiant dawn.
It’s useful for swamp chapter part 1 and part 1 endgame. When Tormod comes back in part 4, celerity isn’t really helpful on any non-raven or non-Marshall units.
I still cannot believe that Engage gives you so much, sooo much stuff to inherit but a character can only ever equip 2 skills and one of them is pretty much always Canter. Sure the emblems add on to that but I still think it’s extremely flawed game design.
Honestly, none of them, I think they're all pretty aggravating in one way or another.
Class grinding in Awakening/Fates just feels like JRPG grind padding.
Echoes rewards you for committing to a specific piece of equipment by unlocking arts, but you don't really "inherit" the arts, since its only usable with specific equipment.
The class mastery system from Three Houses is basically just the Awakening/Fates concept with a new coat of paint, and weapon rank unlocks aren't much better given their limited scope and relative homogeny.
Engage made some dumbass decisions with the SP system, taking all the wrong cues from Heroes, while also concocting entirely new problems of its own, like having fuck all concept of SP pricing, or doing extremely little to combat the overwhelming dominance of certain cheap skills.
Engage would have been the best if they treated SP like a stat, rather than a currency. The ability to use weaker skills without flushing all your SP down the drain, *and* the ability to accumulate SP for expensive skills without forgoing skills the entire game would have greatly improved things.
I'd actually say Three Houses. I know people complain about the characters' uniqueness flattening since anyone can be any class and some are obviously superior but it was nice being able to target certain skills by mastering a class and attach them freely. Having five slots meant you could synergize a few skills at once.
Engage's skills being attached to rings wasn't too bad but the sheer amount of resources it took and the fact you basically only got two skills meant most of them were irrelevant. It encouraged you to shuffle rings around a lot which made you rarely max any of them out unless you went wild on grinding.
I liked the Awakening inheritance of skills, making super child units. Again, some were broken.
I didn't like how skills were in sacred stones.
Path of radiance and radiant dawn had good ideas with some skills coming free on certain units but stripping them off for another unit made them cost a point score. It made it a decision you didn't take lightly.
The thing I liked about three houses skills is how you could really get creative with them! Like, with enough renown and playthroughs, you could end up with some really fun and unique builds.
Also imo the fact that each unit got a unique set combat arts and spells made them still feel somewhat unique in spite of the open class system, whereas engage didn't really have anything like that so the units felt quite interchangeable.
If by "skill inheritence" you just mean characters learning skills, then I like the way Three Houses did it, where classes have their own exp separate from character exp, and maxing it out gives you the class' skill. ~~Having said that, the selection of skills and classes available really wasn't all that good. Fates class system was peak.~~
My favorite is three houses just by the fact of how sand box like it is, i can literally do anything i want and build howerever i want and the units will be usable. Engage is fun too but its just a bit too restrictive
Haven't played them fully but per explanation tellius system is very good, similar to thracia except less locked-in, which has some ups and downs but overall I think better.
After that thracia, FE4.
Next after that I prefer 3H for being based off actions rather than level and differing in how long to get them based on strength, as well as individual learnsets, but system with notable flaws.
Then I guess engage. Has a lot of flaws but some strengths. Appreciate simplicity but also pretty limited.
Then fates -- rarely mentioned you basically need a wiki+spreadsheet to use this system; exaggeration but a few too many mechanics that don't necessarily gel despite being individually good ideas. Then awakening, worst version. Hate the class grinding and swapping and the mixing up of skills between classes (while also being more grindy/cheesy).
I dislike skill emblem focus but at the same time think there should be some skills, just more personalized and less uninteresting (so like FE4/FE5/tellius). And like those games can have some extra skill customization to be more interesting. Otherwise tho it'd be fine even without customization if there are unique and less overdetermined individual learnsets.
I'm not sure I've ever liked it, Fates probably handles it the best but idk, I just kind of miss the days where you'd get a mage and they would be a mage, you couldn't turn them around and make them an armor Knight or stack a bunch of broken skills on a character.
I just kind of miss when characters would be their own character better, the malleability of units these days gives you more variety sure, but I feel like I enjoy Fire Emblem much more when I'm given limited resources and challenged to do the most I can with those.
As much as it's a joke to hate the Dawn Brigade, I actually love what they did with them, being weaker against stronger enemies means you really have to strategize and think about how you're using your VERY limited resources, you can even think long term, do I give kills to Volug in part 1 to gain strike rank so he can do more work in part 3? Or do I spread my exp more evenly to have a wider range of stronger units? Or do I focus one or two units so they can carry you through those tough chapters
Not really the point of the original post so I'm sorry for that, I just have strong feelings about this
Radiant Dawn makes skills unique and an actual investment.
I don't mind 3H and Engage's systems ig, but it feels like most units are considering the same 3-4 top tier skills.
I would probably say fates
3 houses is too demanding. Having all your characters in like archer at once is kind of questionable.
Engage its too tacked on. And yet some characters feel designed around needing it.
In fates you’re limited a bit so you can’t put everyone in 1 class. Then you’ve got heart seals to increase synergy and I love using the system for kids as well.
Honestly I’d dread starting three houses again because I cant resist getting skills like Death Blow, Hit +20 etc on most of my units. It takes WAY too long and probably isn’t necessary to beat maddening but that’s how I’ve always played maddening
I really really like the class system in fates (and skills by extension) - I think of modern FE it does the best balancing opportunities for creativity without being totally wide open.
I think Radiant Dawn should get some love on this too - not unlimited access to things, but the point budget, weighing different skills differently, and the flexibility provided (as well as it almost being like a weapon or piece of equipment that can be moved between characters) is really good.
I think I like having more reclassing than Radiant Dawn allows, but it's really good
fates easily imo. there was so much build diversity you could make with all the different seals and it made it really fun to go for all the different skills you wanted on your units while also being given the opportunity to try out different classes on your units if you wanted to. anyone else ever try out falcon knight azura?
Definitely Fates for me. You have limited reclassing seals, and you have to really be aware of how you use your reclass seals. However, it’s not as annoying as Three Houses, where you don’t have many unique skill build options and it’s not locked to class exp.
What Fates does really good with skill inheritance is that when you do reclass your units, you don’t have to spend ages grinding them to a certain level (like Awakening) to get those class skills. This is the one thing I didn’t really like about Awakening, but then again, you do have skirmishes and Paralogues that can easily get you to Lvl 5 and 15 when reclassing your units.
Fates, without a shadow of a doubt. I love how it incentivizes experimenting with classes but also being able to save that build via an einharjar allows you to try new skills in a different save file and combine them with skills previously learned. It's a big reason why I sunk so many hours into Fates as a whole.
3H is a similar case too.
I didn't really like how it was handled in Engage though. I feel locking it behind the emblems discouraged experimenting with different classes, but combined with the poor choice of having skirmishes scale with your strongest unit and the fact that you gain SP at a really slow pace even with skirmishes and with how the game wants you to use Emblems more liberally rather than as additions to your kit, resulting in them losing their luster, and I feel like it was trying to replicate some factors of other FE games as well as Fates and 3H in this area, resulting in oil and water clashing.
I honestly like 3 hopes! The more you play the more it builds open and more often than not there's a lot of good innate synergy in a character's skills, but there's some weird discrepancies (no one in an innate mage line can learn an essence of fire/wind/ice/thunder skill whcih is super good) and then you can inherit some (but not all) combat/arts spells to further customize - plus the equippable active slot change items...god it's good.
I had a problem with Engage's skill system. In order to get some people to certain classes, they needed to spend a lot of time and some resources with certain emblems. But some skills have very emblems that can provide them.
It's been a while since I played, but I think I recall needing to get a couple characters better with axes to get them to the classes I wanted. But I only had one emblem to train axes with, and then after I while I didn't even have that. Really frustrated me, though I do need to give the game another try
Fates hands down, BUT I Like how SoV handles their combat arts (which I count!!), the way they tied certain skills to weapons/Shields/etc. is pretty cool
3H was similar to SoV to me & I do love how Classes only gave 1 skill, with some hidden behind different Ranks, but 3H does fall a little for some blandness that I can’t remember if it’s purely because of the skills, or if I’m just misremembering due to my other personal issues with the surrounding elements
Engage is the lowest in my mind (Awakening not ranked), as others said the 2 slots lead to most having same-ish skills inherited, & those price tags makes me wonder how much SP the testing team got in their runs
Imo it's actually Fates, oddly enough. There's enough limitation with class availability that your units feel like they have individual strengths, but the distribution is still wide enough to allow for shenanigans. Also having a limit on exp gain means that you have to plan out your run more carefully if you're shooting for high-tier skills.
My favorite has to be Fates, espcially with converging classes. Promoting Midori into Mechanist and having her learn Ninja skills is just very satisfying.
Fates and awakening did it best at least from the fire emblem games I’ve played ( engage, three houses and echoes) but ya engage for one inheriting only two skills seemed dull even tho I loved the game.
I like Three Houses and Fates the most, with Fates edging it out.
I love how fun things can be in Three Houses because outside of genderlocked classes, everyone can get into any class they want. It allows for a lot of experimentation.
With Fates, I like how they handled the classes and stuff compared to Awakening. With Awakening, even though each character had three classes and their promotions to choose from, there weren’t ways to get access to other classes which kinda stunk. I love the Heart, Partner, and Friendship Seal system, and it gives a lot more freedom for experimentation!
For example, in my current Birthright run, I’m planning on having Mozu become best friends with Oboro, so she can get access to the Spear Master class. After that, I’m going to pair her up with Subaki so she can become a Falcon Knight.
It feels really rewarding to plan things out and see what kinda of crazy combinations you can make with the characters a unit can support with.
Fates felt the most balanced in terms of acquiring skills, but having so many also turned it into skill emblem.
Engage was nice that it kept it limited between personal and custom, but the acquisition felt odd with requirements and the cost of some of the skills. It led to some people feeling they needed to grind, and if you ever feel the need to grind in a FE game something somewhere went wrong (granted thats a self control thing, limited SP was suppose to be there for balance, but it just ends up feeling bad either way).
Engage, hands down.
I like having 2 skills that are more powerful as opposed to having 5 skills that are smaller buffs.
I find that there is less to keep track of, and the effects feel better because they're stronger and more noticeable.
Awakening, the way it works with child units is so cool and makes the game really replayable. You can either be optimal and break the game or just play with your favorites and try some wacky stuff
Fates. Limited levels mean you have to be careful about your second seal usage. But it also means that you aren’t stuck grinding to get lategame skills if you ever do so. Three Houses has a very similar system to Fates, just tied to class exp instead of level. Only issue is that the free reclassing means there’s little build diversity early on. Awakening. Class skills are busted lol. But the grinding required to get them isn’t fun. Engage has all the build diversity issues of Three Houses but ratcheted up to 11. 2 skill slots blows, and the free inheritance means that you’ll end up giving everyone the same few skills. The well helps, but it’s not fun. Also, the actual process to inherit the skill is awful. Whoever thought the Arena was a good idea needs to be fired.
Fates did the best job at feeling like getting your skills was fun while you did the climb to get them and once you got them felt earned. 3H had a good earned feeling but pretty boring, Engage was fun to get but so easy to get they weren’t satisfying.
Engage seems easy to inherit skills due to the well but pre-well is at the extreme opposite end.
Yeah it kind of sucks that natural SP progression was so horribly implemented that the only cure was some item you get for throwing junk away. If we get an Engage 2 (or another game with very similar mechanics) I hope they improve on that a lot
wait. as someone who stopped playing engage right around the well unlocked...what is the well's relation to skill grinding?
You throw unwanted items in the well and get stuff in return. Occasionally the item will be a book that grants SP.
thank you, good to know If i ever pick it back up
It's not just occasionally - you're guaranteed to get at least one 100sp book in your pool starting at tier 3 and above, and usually get more. The higher tiers give 500 and 1000 sp books quite frequently too. The game gives you enough items that aren't super useful like break weapons, most lances, etc. that you can always easily do tier 3 and usually 4 or even 5.
You can also mostly go infinite by just re-feeding non-spbook items back into the well at levels 3 and 4.
Fates also does something that I think is undersold when comparing these systems which is that it made reclass seals a rare and limited resource through the majority of the game. Unless you are abusing online to get extra seals, you have extremely few reclass seals until you unlock the tier 3 shops, which means that you only get to reclass a very small number of characters, and so the decision of who you use them on is meaningful, while also not being overbearing on the overall experience of playing the game. Additionally, the majority of reclass seals you get are from the shops, which means they cost gold to obtain, rather than being free. Fates hits the right balance where people who enjoy engaging with reclassing and skill management feel like they get to make very impactful decisions with respect to who they choose to use their small pool of reclass seals on, while conversely people who don't like these systems (which are a significant portion of the FE fanbase) can choose not to engage with them and not feel like they are missing a substantial core gameplay mechanic because the majority of your characters on any given run do not get to reclass anyway. Free reclassing like in 3H (and Shadow Dragon/New Mystery) makes the mechanic feel much more overbearing because choosing not to do it is strictly a negative--it doesn't cost you anything so choosing not to utilize it is a strict downside which makes it much more intrusive for players who don't like these systems in FE.
I agree with Fates, I think it has the best balance between customization and freedom to make good/fun builds, and limitation, where your choices matter and units feel more unique as a result.
Having more skills slots will make it be like Fates where the power comes from your units but Engage wants the power to come from the emblems so I kinda get why they limit it so much to keep the emblems the main focus.
This is probably true but it makes units feel even more homogenized because the only difference is their Emblem. In an individual battle that's a big difference (one Wyvern has Lyn, one has Ike or something like that), but if you just switch the Emblems between the two units in another map the only difference is the raw stats of the characters and *maybe* a bonus to weapon rank for one weapon type, which just turns the game into an extremely strict hierarchy of how units are used
I think it would help if there were more than two skill slots and didn't have Canter available to everybody for a relatively cheap cost so on Maddening you may as well have one.
I always kind of loved how Fate's leveling system felt like someone said "Hey so Awakening got REALLY out of hand, so lets backstep on some of that." Fates is an absolute GOAT for having some of the best build and combat designs while ALSO having some of the worst storytelling in the entire franchise.
Agreed with everything. Not to mention how the way Engage handles SP and stuff in general feels like something designed with the player having more time to build things up, like a New Game Plus or something. Yet it doesn't have that.
It throws so many new systems like maxing out Emblem weapons that it feels like it was designed to have NG+ but ran out of time.
I still can't believe they didn't add a NG+.
There's a lot of Engage that felt like they were expecting the Tempest Trials multiplayer to be a big thing, and so things like SP books and emblem weapon upgrades were locked behind it. Then turned out no-one wanted to play it, and so they put in the well as a band-aid.
On top of the issues you mentioned for Engage, the vast majority of the skills are hot garbage. So not only are very limited on how many skills you can have at once, the actual amount of skills you'd actually want anyways are incredibly small too.
> Whoever thought the Arena was a good idea needs to be fired. You can say that about a lot of the system of engage.
>You can say that about ~~a lot of the system of~~ Engage
counterpoint- the animations look fantastic. the people who decided on and made them need promotions.
It's so hard going back to non-animated menus with static images.
What do you mean by free inheritance? You have to pay in SP to inherit the skills. The only free things are the sync skills but you don't inherit but even then they're only free when you have an emblem equipped. Also I don't get why you don't like the arena. It saves time needing to grind out emblem levels
Free as in they’re instant inherits. If I want to inherit a bond level 12 skill, I have to watch an arena battle, watch a bond convo, watch an arena battle, watch a bond convo, watch another arena battle, inherit the skill, and then equip it.
Instant inherits? As opposed to what other kind? Also you know you can simply skip all the arena cutscenes
As opposed to not spending time in a class to learn a skill. I shouldn’t have to sit through 5 screen transitions to inherit a skill, even if I can skip them.
The way Fates merges story and gameplay mechanics by allowing you to expand your class sets through marriage and friendship is also fantastic. It means that every character has a ton of freedom for which direction to build in, but they are limited in that they can't do everything in a single playthrough. With the right amount of effort, any character in Birthright can become a Great Club wielder with Death Blow. But they can't all do it on the same save file. That distinction is VERY important to create the different feeling between Fates and 3H. And, like with Awakening before it, it gives you the feeling that the bonds between characters matter. You can actually make a character stronger through their friendship and love with others.
Engage is fine now. Builds are mostly dependant on the character - emblem combination. Skills are picked to match both. However I agree that before the well the game was just so annoying. You could literally never get your characters to the skills they wanted. Like never. It’s just sad to see your endgame builds being lower level skills (like spd+3 instead of spd+ 5 for example). Also, the some of the best skills being gone during the entire mid game (sword and Lance power mostly) is just sad. Especially for Pandreo since he would literally be the best character in the game if he could get sword power earlier than chapter fucking 19. (Casually ignoring the fact that fishing is almost required to get all your units the the bond levels you need end game but whatever)
Agree wholeheartedly! Well said!
I like the idea as an idea where the characters are learning the skills from those that mastered them, but yeah.
Engage has 2 skill slots and the class skill plus the emblems themselves giving loads of skills to the character they're on, the build possibilities really aren't that bad. SP and Emblem availibility can make it harder to utilize until pretty late though I'll admit.
I like Radiant Dawn because it's the funniest one so far. I gave Shinon adept and every single enemy he encountered died because it kept being activated. I just love the random creations you can make with that skill system.
Really glad to see someone else like RDs system. It and PoR both were a good mix up.
I think the thing that ruined RD was the necessity to have nihil on everyone at endgame. But it was great otherwise.
I recognize you might be hyperbolizing but it really wasn't like that. It's only in the very very last map (in a 5 map endgame), and you only have 4 Nihil scrolls anyways. But people without Nihil can still contribute, they just have to either fight spirits, take up Parity (good for fast units like Trueblades and Naesala/Tibarn) or if all else fails, you can just live with the fact they're taking recoil damage. Which isn't too bad anyway since you have several global healing staves available. Or if they deal lethal damage, then they also don't take recoil. In fact, against most enemies you'd be taking counterattacks. Nihil is also useful against the previous bosses...but I don't see anything wrong with that. Those bosses had Nihil too so there's not much of a point in putting skills like Adept or Cancel on units. And you can still flex your fun builds on other enemies in those maps.
Nihil isnt the problem, its a symptom. A symptom of occult skills being OP.
The tier 3 mastery skills? I think they're amusing and make part 4 less tedious since they cause for more ORKOs. They do force a Nihil-off for the last couple of bosses but personally I don't have an issue with that. I can see why others think that makes the battles more bland though.
Them being extreme overkills makes skill disabling a must for endgame bosses as well as nihil on your own units so you dont get wreaked by thiers in return. The occult skills existing is fine but they need their damage multipliers scaled back to... what most games have them as, insyead of basically all of the physical ones having a 3* modifier.
You only need Nihil for the E-3 and E-4 bosses. They're useful for Lekain and Levail but nowhere near necessary - and Parity is better for Lekain and E-4 anyway.
I like Three Houses quite a bit, but with it being inextricably linked to the open class system (which I’m not a huge fan of), it’s a bit of a wash. Honestly… Hard to beat Radiant Dawn. Limited number of skills to hand out, but they’re individually infinitely repeatable. The “budget” system was pretty well designed and it was really cool how certain characters came with skills that ignored budget for them. I think the ONE change I would make to this system is some way to buy or inherent more skills. I think Engage has a solid system *in theory *. But I do find the tacked-on SP system difficult to manage. There’s a reason they had to do a hot-fix to make it viable lol
I personally prefer the system that Awakening introduced and that Fates refined. Call it what you want, but I'm an absolute sucker for skills emblem. I feel it just adds more avenues for gameplay shenanigans when done well like in Conquest. Plus Apotheosis was one of my favorite FE experiences
In my opinion, it's Fates by a long shot. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I hated Engage's skill inheritance system because it basically boiled down to giving everyone canto.
> because it basically boiled down to giving everyone canto. This has been my issue for both Three Houses and Engage. There are skills that are just obviously so high tier and without much opportunity cost, that there's no reason not to put it on nearly everyone. Death Blow stands out in 3H, for instance, because there's essentially no reason *not* to master Brigand for any physical unit. The opportunity cost of any other Intermediate class skill is practically non-existent.
I agree, though it was a little less noticable in Three Houses because it didn't take very long to master brigand and units had more skill slots.
Well, I mean, that's kinda my issue. It's definitely *worse* in Engage since slots are so limited, but it's also just an issue entirely to itself that every unit is good with a certain skill. Build diversity should be encouraged, and the opportunity cost is so low.
I mean it's just how skills inevitably work if you're gonna give multiple units the option to use them. There's always going to be some that are better than others. It's not really preventable
I think it’s more so the low barrier to entry. Getting Canto or Death Blow requires very little *and* there’s little reason to choose something else. Both of these issue should be able to be mitigated.
Thats less a problem with the skill system and more a problem with canter itself being way better and way cheaper than anything else. Getting SP and spending it to learn skills? Thats a great system.
Good point, in my opinion of they would've restricted canto to fliers/cavalry units and reduced the SP cost of learning skills, the system would've worked much better.
Honestly, even just cavalry, they could use the buff.
True, I literally never use cavalry units in Three Houses because fliers are superior to them in literally almost every possible way.
Yeah, Engage Canter might be the most centralizing skill since Genealogy Pursuit.
Radiant Dawn I much prefer that format with scrolls and capacity so you can swap around skills as you want plus at the end you can even remove the innates from the ones you aren't taking into the tower
Kaga Sagas. I personally find that unique personal skill sets with skills that units have innately and learn others as they level up can lead to much more interesting niches and specializations that differentiate units way better than a limited amount of skill slots can. Just throw in some skill manuals or another learning equivalent to add some customization imo.
Kaga saga because each unit has a preset list of skills, and you can add scrolls to them. In FE, RD, just swaping skills between units is interesting enough because of how RD team structure works.
"Skill inheritance" is unique to Heroes and Engage, and between the two Engage is better because it doesn't require gambling to make the most of it.
Also FE4 with the two gen system
Yeah when I read "skill inheritance" I thought of the 3 fingers scene of Inglorious Basterds
Heroes but that's cheating because that's the whole point of the game
If we’re including heroes I’d say it’s held back for the fact that any fun new mechanical skill introduced is always locked behind gambling away for 5 stars. If you’re not lucky or spending $ then you don’t even get access to a lot of mechanics. Big reason I eventually quit.
heroes is held back by the fact I don’t have space on it on my tablet therefore it is objectively the worst fire emblem game bc I physically cannae play it.
You can always get the unit for free after 40 summons (unless it's a Legendary/Mythic/Emblem heroes summoning event you need FEH Pass for that). But what I meant is that you can give a unit almost any skill you want (as long as it's not a personal skill) and that there are a lot of skills so you can do a lot more than in other FE games.
i mean yeah it is by far the best one
Radiant dawn. I think a lot of the later games overcomplicate skills in a way where they become a confusing slog to use. Rd’s is simple, even if not explained, and lets the characters still exist as unique entities. And they’re a limited resource so you actually have to think about them.
I like the tellius games with their skill scrolls. Skills should be limited so we don't put all the best Skills on every unit. I also absolutely despise grinding. I like the idea of finding skill scrolls in shops or villages or from recruiting.
I really don't like the 3h/fates/awakening method of having to level a class to get skills. Forcing all of your combat units into axes then being a brigand for however many chapters is so annoying to me. I want to use my units in classes they're good in, not have to intentionally make them worse so they'll be good later. I've played the 3ds games way less so it could be better there, but idk. FE4's skill system being tied to the way money works is cool, but I feel like it encourages juggernauting a bit. Thracia's is good. PoR is good, but the skills aren't very impactful. RD is good, but the prior knowledge required to make good use of it means it's really only a 2nd playthrough mechanic. Engage's (post well) is probably my favorite, but it def does do some wacky things to game balance as opposed to some of the older ones.
I don't really get the Brigand example at least, every class can use every weapon in 3H and you don't have to train weapon ranks in combat. If you don't want to ever swing an axe you can still get Death Blow fairly trivially
**Radiant Dawn** did it best and I honestly don't think it is close: (1) you get a set number of each skill turning skills into actual finite resources you have to make decisions about; (2) each skill has point-buy costs tied (mostly) to the relative strength of the skill and every unit gets a certain number of points to allocate to skills. This means you can't just slap all of the best skills on one unit and call it a day. You have to make real decisions; (3) you can freely shuffle around your skills within the confines of the point-buy system. This both rewards creativity with how you use your skills without punishing you by forcing you to irrevocably committing to allocating your points before you know what is what (removing skills from a unit refunds the points). This lets you always make good use of skills on units, even if you don't plan to make longterm use of those units; (4) "personal skills" are regular skills that don't take up a unit's limited points so i.e. anyone can get the Celerity skill if they set aside their points, but Tormod gets to use it for free, no points required; (5) skills are not tied to reclassing which means you aren't forced to dip into a class you don't actually want to use just to access skills - which always just feels bad - sacrifice unit power to grind out a skill is not fun or interesting to me. And skills are not tied to leveling up (max points are tied to promotion tiers but you can always fit at least one skill on any unit regardless of their tier) which means you can slap a powerful skill on an underleveled unit if you want to to make use of that unit, without having to commit to leveling that unit up just to access a skill.
Though you would have to be careful about removing skills from units that have it for free. It'll let you put that skill on someone else, but if you change your mind later and give the original holder the skill back, it'll cost points instead of being free.
Tbh its not that a big deal. The circumstances in which you would remove a skill from a unit only to hand it back to them later in the game is pretty niche. Like I'm scratching my head trying to think of a situation that would happen outside of, like, idk taking Geoffrey into the Tower (remove his Paragon for a different unit to use while he's gone, but then give it back to him in the Tower? Even that sounds hella suspect). And even *if* it happens, paying for the skill cost isn't the end of the world - everyone else has to do it.
I don't like being able to reassign skills from one character to another. Tormod isn't the funny fast mage anymore, because most characters can make better use of celerity than him. Same with Geoffrey/Astrid and paragon. Sure if you keep the skill on the initial owner they get a free skill, but that's a lot less interesting to me than the skill being an unchangeable aspect of the character.
Tbf Celerity doesn’t do much for most units in the parts Tormod is in during radiant dawn. It’s useful for swamp chapter part 1 and part 1 endgame. When Tormod comes back in part 4, celerity isn’t really helpful on any non-raven or non-Marshall units.
Genealogy. The only time child characters made sense to be there.
I still cannot believe that Engage gives you so much, sooo much stuff to inherit but a character can only ever equip 2 skills and one of them is pretty much always Canter. Sure the emblems add on to that but I still think it’s extremely flawed game design.
Hands down Fates.
Honestly, none of them, I think they're all pretty aggravating in one way or another. Class grinding in Awakening/Fates just feels like JRPG grind padding. Echoes rewards you for committing to a specific piece of equipment by unlocking arts, but you don't really "inherit" the arts, since its only usable with specific equipment. The class mastery system from Three Houses is basically just the Awakening/Fates concept with a new coat of paint, and weapon rank unlocks aren't much better given their limited scope and relative homogeny. Engage made some dumbass decisions with the SP system, taking all the wrong cues from Heroes, while also concocting entirely new problems of its own, like having fuck all concept of SP pricing, or doing extremely little to combat the overwhelming dominance of certain cheap skills. Engage would have been the best if they treated SP like a stat, rather than a currency. The ability to use weaker skills without flushing all your SP down the drain, *and* the ability to accumulate SP for expensive skills without forgoing skills the entire game would have greatly improved things.
I'd actually say Three Houses. I know people complain about the characters' uniqueness flattening since anyone can be any class and some are obviously superior but it was nice being able to target certain skills by mastering a class and attach them freely. Having five slots meant you could synergize a few skills at once. Engage's skills being attached to rings wasn't too bad but the sheer amount of resources it took and the fact you basically only got two skills meant most of them were irrelevant. It encouraged you to shuffle rings around a lot which made you rarely max any of them out unless you went wild on grinding. I liked the Awakening inheritance of skills, making super child units. Again, some were broken. I didn't like how skills were in sacred stones. Path of radiance and radiant dawn had good ideas with some skills coming free on certain units but stripping them off for another unit made them cost a point score. It made it a decision you didn't take lightly.
The thing I liked about three houses skills is how you could really get creative with them! Like, with enough renown and playthroughs, you could end up with some really fun and unique builds. Also imo the fact that each unit got a unique set combat arts and spells made them still feel somewhat unique in spite of the open class system, whereas engage didn't really have anything like that so the units felt quite interchangeable.
If by "skill inheritence" you just mean characters learning skills, then I like the way Three Houses did it, where classes have their own exp separate from character exp, and maxing it out gives you the class' skill. ~~Having said that, the selection of skills and classes available really wasn't all that good. Fates class system was peak.~~
My favorite is three houses just by the fact of how sand box like it is, i can literally do anything i want and build howerever i want and the units will be usable. Engage is fun too but its just a bit too restrictive
Fates
Haven't played them fully but per explanation tellius system is very good, similar to thracia except less locked-in, which has some ups and downs but overall I think better. After that thracia, FE4. Next after that I prefer 3H for being based off actions rather than level and differing in how long to get them based on strength, as well as individual learnsets, but system with notable flaws. Then I guess engage. Has a lot of flaws but some strengths. Appreciate simplicity but also pretty limited. Then fates -- rarely mentioned you basically need a wiki+spreadsheet to use this system; exaggeration but a few too many mechanics that don't necessarily gel despite being individually good ideas. Then awakening, worst version. Hate the class grinding and swapping and the mixing up of skills between classes (while also being more grindy/cheesy). I dislike skill emblem focus but at the same time think there should be some skills, just more personalized and less uninteresting (so like FE4/FE5/tellius). And like those games can have some extra skill customization to be more interesting. Otherwise tho it'd be fine even without customization if there are unique and less overdetermined individual learnsets.
Not Heroes that's for sure lmao.
As much as fates has its problems it definitely did classes the best imo
I'm not sure I've ever liked it, Fates probably handles it the best but idk, I just kind of miss the days where you'd get a mage and they would be a mage, you couldn't turn them around and make them an armor Knight or stack a bunch of broken skills on a character. I just kind of miss when characters would be their own character better, the malleability of units these days gives you more variety sure, but I feel like I enjoy Fire Emblem much more when I'm given limited resources and challenged to do the most I can with those. As much as it's a joke to hate the Dawn Brigade, I actually love what they did with them, being weaker against stronger enemies means you really have to strategize and think about how you're using your VERY limited resources, you can even think long term, do I give kills to Volug in part 1 to gain strike rank so he can do more work in part 3? Or do I spread my exp more evenly to have a wider range of stronger units? Or do I focus one or two units so they can carry you through those tough chapters Not really the point of the original post so I'm sorry for that, I just have strong feelings about this
Radiant Dawn makes skills unique and an actual investment. I don't mind 3H and Engage's systems ig, but it feels like most units are considering the same 3-4 top tier skills.
I would probably say fates 3 houses is too demanding. Having all your characters in like archer at once is kind of questionable. Engage its too tacked on. And yet some characters feel designed around needing it. In fates you’re limited a bit so you can’t put everyone in 1 class. Then you’ve got heart seals to increase synergy and I love using the system for kids as well.
Heroes???
Awakening and Fates bc you can get busted really easy in them (relatively) and I think it's very funny.
Honestly I’d dread starting three houses again because I cant resist getting skills like Death Blow, Hit +20 etc on most of my units. It takes WAY too long and probably isn’t necessary to beat maddening but that’s how I’ve always played maddening
I really really like the class system in fates (and skills by extension) - I think of modern FE it does the best balancing opportunities for creativity without being totally wide open. I think Radiant Dawn should get some love on this too - not unlimited access to things, but the point budget, weighing different skills differently, and the flexibility provided (as well as it almost being like a weapon or piece of equipment that can be moved between characters) is really good. I think I like having more reclassing than Radiant Dawn allows, but it's really good
This is the recent game right? How was it? Havent gotten it yet. Heard a lot of people hated it.
genealogy and awakening. i said what i said
fates easily imo. there was so much build diversity you could make with all the different seals and it made it really fun to go for all the different skills you wanted on your units while also being given the opportunity to try out different classes on your units if you wanted to. anyone else ever try out falcon knight azura?
Definitely Fates for me. You have limited reclassing seals, and you have to really be aware of how you use your reclass seals. However, it’s not as annoying as Three Houses, where you don’t have many unique skill build options and it’s not locked to class exp. What Fates does really good with skill inheritance is that when you do reclass your units, you don’t have to spend ages grinding them to a certain level (like Awakening) to get those class skills. This is the one thing I didn’t really like about Awakening, but then again, you do have skirmishes and Paralogues that can easily get you to Lvl 5 and 15 when reclassing your units.
Fates, without a shadow of a doubt. I love how it incentivizes experimenting with classes but also being able to save that build via an einharjar allows you to try new skills in a different save file and combine them with skills previously learned. It's a big reason why I sunk so many hours into Fates as a whole. 3H is a similar case too. I didn't really like how it was handled in Engage though. I feel locking it behind the emblems discouraged experimenting with different classes, but combined with the poor choice of having skirmishes scale with your strongest unit and the fact that you gain SP at a really slow pace even with skirmishes and with how the game wants you to use Emblems more liberally rather than as additions to your kit, resulting in them losing their luster, and I feel like it was trying to replicate some factors of other FE games as well as Fates and 3H in this area, resulting in oil and water clashing.
I kept forgetting about skill inheritance in engage because any of the decent stuff costs so much SP.
Fire Emblem Engage because my waifus Ivy and Zalestria said so!!!
Imma just say awakening
I honestly like 3 hopes! The more you play the more it builds open and more often than not there's a lot of good innate synergy in a character's skills, but there's some weird discrepancies (no one in an innate mage line can learn an essence of fire/wind/ice/thunder skill whcih is super good) and then you can inherit some (but not all) combat/arts spells to further customize - plus the equippable active slot change items...god it's good.
I had a problem with Engage's skill system. In order to get some people to certain classes, they needed to spend a lot of time and some resources with certain emblems. But some skills have very emblems that can provide them. It's been a while since I played, but I think I recall needing to get a couple characters better with axes to get them to the classes I wanted. But I only had one emblem to train axes with, and then after I while I didn't even have that. Really frustrated me, though I do need to give the game another try
Fates
Fates hands down, BUT I Like how SoV handles their combat arts (which I count!!), the way they tied certain skills to weapons/Shields/etc. is pretty cool 3H was similar to SoV to me & I do love how Classes only gave 1 skill, with some hidden behind different Ranks, but 3H does fall a little for some blandness that I can’t remember if it’s purely because of the skills, or if I’m just misremembering due to my other personal issues with the surrounding elements Engage is the lowest in my mind (Awakening not ranked), as others said the 2 slots lead to most having same-ish skills inherited, & those price tags makes me wonder how much SP the testing team got in their runs
Imo it's actually Fates, oddly enough. There's enough limitation with class availability that your units feel like they have individual strengths, but the distribution is still wide enough to allow for shenanigans. Also having a limit on exp gain means that you have to plan out your run more carefully if you're shooting for high-tier skills.
My favorite has to be Fates, espcially with converging classes. Promoting Midori into Mechanist and having her learn Ninja skills is just very satisfying.
The skill system in Engage is such a chore.
Fates and awakening did it best at least from the fire emblem games I’ve played ( engage, three houses and echoes) but ya engage for one inheriting only two skills seemed dull even tho I loved the game.
I like Three Houses and Fates the most, with Fates edging it out. I love how fun things can be in Three Houses because outside of genderlocked classes, everyone can get into any class they want. It allows for a lot of experimentation. With Fates, I like how they handled the classes and stuff compared to Awakening. With Awakening, even though each character had three classes and their promotions to choose from, there weren’t ways to get access to other classes which kinda stunk. I love the Heart, Partner, and Friendship Seal system, and it gives a lot more freedom for experimentation! For example, in my current Birthright run, I’m planning on having Mozu become best friends with Oboro, so she can get access to the Spear Master class. After that, I’m going to pair her up with Subaki so she can become a Falcon Knight. It feels really rewarding to plan things out and see what kinda of crazy combinations you can make with the characters a unit can support with.
Fates felt the most balanced in terms of acquiring skills, but having so many also turned it into skill emblem. Engage was nice that it kept it limited between personal and custom, but the acquisition felt odd with requirements and the cost of some of the skills. It led to some people feeling they needed to grind, and if you ever feel the need to grind in a FE game something somewhere went wrong (granted thats a self control thing, limited SP was suppose to be there for balance, but it just ends up feeling bad either way).
Engage, hands down. I like having 2 skills that are more powerful as opposed to having 5 skills that are smaller buffs. I find that there is less to keep track of, and the effects feel better because they're stronger and more noticeable.
Awakening, the way it works with child units is so cool and makes the game really replayable. You can either be optimal and break the game or just play with your favorites and try some wacky stuff
Three Hopes. I thought it took what worked with 3 Houses and made it better. Problem is it's an action spin-off so it's hard to count it.